


Three Times

by Fayghost



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Allusions to sexual trauma, Gen, ptsd & triggering, upd8
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-08
Updated: 2015-01-08
Packaged: 2018-03-06 16:43:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3141488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fayghost/pseuds/Fayghost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't remember. You try to explain, IT ROTS YOU; but in what places? What does it leave?</p><p>You are gears without oil, now, and they grind and grind and grind. A small, sharp thing in a large machine made of flesh, pushed free, floats in your insides. There are no hands on your wrists, nothing in your mouth. It's blissfully clear to you that you are wounded.</p><p>What caused it?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Times

You are five, and you do not remember it.

There was something like trust, initially, that the bruises you woke with beside your empty pie tin were something inexplicable. Perhaps the kiss of god. There was no one to correct you, so you took the explanation and slipped another mound into the platter.

But you wake from sleeping many times, unsettled, prodding the places in your flesh long after the marks are gone. Eventually you are no longer five. But your trust in gods is no worse for wear.

There is a gentle rotting, somewhere. Like a missing tooth, but not an absence. A small, sharp presence in your thoughts, like the block where you tread softly in fear of waking ghosts. And you heat up another pie. And another.

You don't care about it anymore. You lie on your back and watch the shapes in the ceiling as it pulses, breathing.

There are no hands on your wrists. There is nothing in your mouth. There is no blood on the shore. There is no pound of hooves and heaving of salty breath, tongue lapping over your back. You eat, sour and hot and thick, sticking to fingers that will grip the club tightly the next time you go out. And the next. And the next.

And you go quiet, and still.

 

–

 

It took so much from you.

He would message you when you were high, and ask you to do things you were glad to. You were five, and you did not remember. Not enough that the feeling of his words, prodding like fingers for gratification, felt anything more than dimly familiar. You wish there had been some small part of you that knew you could refuse.

You permitted every transgression with sweetness and calm. Now you are left with bitterness and injury, but the shame is far worse. Nothing is hardly as bad as having allowed it in the first place. No matter how many times you try to go back and pull up clarity from those numb places, form the memories whole, they're uncertain. You only have that strange, hollow wrong in you.

You don't remember. You try to explain, IT ROTS YOU; but in what places? What does it leave?

You are gears without oil, now, and they grind and grind and grind. A small, sharp thing in a large machine made of flesh, pushed free, floats in your insides. There are no hands on your wrists, nothing in your mouth. It's blissfully clear to you that you are wounded.

What caused it?

BOTH MOTHERFUCKING THINGS, you said, not knowing how many.

You do a terrible thing, and then another.

 

–

 

There's a lurch in your stomach that turns into a slow, fading prickle around each lung. A tightness settles, a steady plummet in your guts. Your vision goes distant, far away. You are looking in your own head for somewhere to go, circling borders and averting your eyes and thoughts, breaking like put through a prism. You want to crawl out before it's too late and the boundary is crossed forever. You would cover your face, you would fight. This time, for sure-- this time you would.

It's almost a sigh of resignation, before the terror. A small note of a breath.

Before the thing in your mouth, before that shock that digs under each hingeplate and rattles you. You struggle, but you can't stop it from shoving past your teeth, your tongue slips to the left side. Twisting, down into your throat. The stretch in your jaw and the hands on your wrists, sliding up your arms, gripping each shoulder, then your horns. Gagging, and sputtering. The pound of hooves and the heaving of salty breath, the blood on the shore, and a tongue lapping over your back.

Over and over.

You can't get it out. You stop trying, sucking in breath through your nose and remembering. You were only five. You had to endure.

And you go quiet, and still.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you have a choice of dealing with trauma inappropriately or not dealing with it at all.


End file.
